


Quizas

by BethNoir



Category: Better Call Saul (TV)
Genre: Dinner, Fix-It of Sorts, Food, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:21:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25474564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BethNoir/pseuds/BethNoir
Summary: Nacho gets an invitation to dinner.
Relationships: Gustavo Fring/Ignacio "Nacho" Varga
Comments: 5
Kudos: 19





	1. Nature Valley

**Author's Note:**

> Nobody’s written Gus/Nacho? Tsk. Cowards.
> 
> Written because as much as I like to think Gus was a master planner, he trusted Walter White and got owned by Hector. This is my fix-it if he had better sense about who to trust.
> 
> Also fluff. And food porn. Because I’ve gone dark and heavy with so much of my other stuff, I think it’s funny to write something light for this of all shows. Except there will probably be some sads because it clings to Nacho like cat dander, so leave comments about where you want this to go. Also because my ego enjoys it.
> 
> (I'm also aware I owe some other fanfic in other places, but I've had this sitting for about a month and I want it off my dash.)

“You drive.”

Nacho felt sick. Of all the nervous tics he was cursed with, flop sweat had to be the worst. It wouldn’t be any better to have twitching hands or a stammer, but when the pressure was on, he looked like a glazed donut.

If Hector recovered, he would personally kill Nacho if he touched his Impala, so Nacho had to drive Gustavo Fring to his chicken farm in his late 80s piece of shit Chevy. Nacho always prided himself on keeping a low profile with his work instead of riding around in a cop magnet of a muscle car, but for some reason he felt self-conscious about the van.

As they rattled down the dirt road away from the garage, Nacho realized Fring was staring at him; his head barely turned, but his eyes were completely locked on Nacho.

Nacho looked back at him. Just a short glare, which was usually enough to rattle someone to look away and mind their business. Fring was not one of those people, but he knew that. Nacho looked back to the road, and after a moment, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Fring look away. But then he spoke.

“Do you have your phone?”  
“Yeah.” Nacho replied.  
“May I see it?”  
“Why?”  
“You should have my number. In case of any further emergencies, and to keep me informed of Hector’s status, should he recover. Don Juan would not have come this far if he was not serious about our families making peace.”

Fring held out his hand. It was like he already knew Nacho would give him a bullshit number like for a cop bar, or Moviefone. Nacho reached into his pocket, fumbled around for his phone, and handed it over as he pulled onto the 25. Fring plucked it from his fingers without a word.

If he could go back to his younger self and warn him about the perils of pushing meth, it wouldn’t be because of the harm it would do to society, or the risk of violence in dealing with co-workers or rivals. It was the fucking tedium of driving all over town to avoid suspicion. Change these clothes, get a new phone, park your car here so we can pick you up and drive you there to discuss something we’ll be doing in the middle of the fucking desert which will take another several hours, take the same route everyday to set a pattern for the cops except for when you need to take a different route so they can’t catch onto what you’re really up to, and despite all of these precautions, none of these pendejos he worked with ever wore gloves and left their fingerprints everywhere.

Selling drugs looked cool on TV, but it was fucking tedious in the life.

It was March, and the middle of the night, but Nacho was sweating. As he drove south on the nearly empty highway, Nacho tried to tell himself it was the leather jacket and his layered shirts underneath that were making him sweat, not the terror of what was waiting for him at the chicken farm.

Or it was that look Fring gave him before he called Bolsa. As if he didn’t know what to expect either. The faintest sign of vulnerability from a man who carried himself like a titan.

“You’ll want to stay on here until exit 47. I’ll tell you where to turn,” said Fring as he entered his number in Nacho’s phone, which was only a fuzzy patch of green light in the corner of his eye. A second screen lit up in Fring’s other hand, as he called his number from Nacho’s phone.

He didn’t want Fring in his car. It was bad enough to have Hector bring the business to his father’s shop, but this shit tonight was entirely too deep into his boundaries. He wanted to be driving home, by himself, with the familiar smell of the city at night and his burner of a car. He did not want to smell whatever cologne Fring was wearing. It was making his skin crawl, and Nacho wanted to believe it was from nausea. 

He was doing a terrible job of persuading himself.

“Got it?” Nacho asked.

Nacho heard a flip phone clip shut, and Fring handed his phone back to him. Nacho reached out. His heart leapt into his throat as their fingers touched, and an electric current shot through him. He assured himself he was just nervous and that was it. It wasn’t because of the sweet and leathery smell of his cologne.

Versace. Fring was wearing Versace.

Nacho grabbed the handle inside his door and rolled the window down. The dry, dusty cold air of early spring burst through the car, and Nacho finally felt his temperature drop. Fring removed his glasses and blinked the grit out of his eyes.

“Is that necessary?” Fring asked.  
“I’m on the inside lane. Nobody’s watching us from here.” Nacho snapped.

He should know better than to snap at someone with Fring’s history, especially if what Hector and Tuco gossiped about was true, and especially since Fring was his superior. But if he was going to the farm to get shot and ground up into chicken nuggets, it didn’t really matter what he did.

It was a half hour of excruciating silence before they reached the farm. Fring directed Nacho on where to drop him off, and then where he could go to park. The only thing that made Nacho calm down, and nervous again as he remembered why they were there, was the sight of Arturo’s Oldsmobile. Carlos stayed with the cars, while Arturo and Nacho waited by shrink-wrapped pallets of salsa and ketchup packets, until Bolsa called for them with a snap of his fingers, like they were dogs.

“A ti te conozco,” Bolsa said to Arturo. He crossed over to Nacho and looked at him with curiosity. “Pero a ti no.”  
“Se compadre de Tuco,” Arturo explained. “Buena onda.”  
“Es compadre de Tuco?” Bolsa didn’t laugh, but he clearly thought it was funny such a quiet man was a friend of Tuco Salamanca.  
“Ignacio.” Nacho said simply.

It did not go unnoticed to him that Fring took interest in hearing his name.

Bolsa explained what happened with Hector and what would be happening with the Salamanca territory. Nacho and Arturo were dismissed. Nacho couldn’t even think about what Bolsa and Fring were talking about, or register what Arturo was ranting about, although it was probably something about how he would take revenge for Don Hector.

Nacho agreed to let him recover Don Hector’s car. They were under orders to not disclose what happened to Don Hector to the underlings. It wasn’t their business anyway. Nacho would take his seat at La Michoacan, and everything would continue as it had.

And he hasn’t had dinner. Nacho wondered if it was worth pulling into the Dog House or Whataburger or any of the taquerias where they would warmly welcome the son of Manuel Varga, or the ones where they would hurriedly and quietly serve the lieutenant of Hector Salamanca.

Except Nacho was at the age where he was reminding himself, “hay comida en la casa”. The faster he was home, faster he could shower, eat something, and go to bed. He was bitter, annoyed, stressed out, and just wanted this all to end.

And as if it were a reward for his vigilance, when Nacho reached for his phone, he found an ancient Nature Valley bar stuck between the cup holder and the passenger seat. It exploded like shrapnel and rained granola down his shirt, but he was fed. He showered, he slept, and he would have something better to eat in the morning.

When he woke up, his phone was buzzing from an unrecognized number. When he answered, a voice he didn’t recognize said,

“Mr. Fring wants to know if you’re free for dinner.”


	2. Paila Marina

“Do you have any allergies?”

Nacho looked up. Fring had stopped chopping cilantro to ask him. It was one of a string of weird statements and questions he has had for him since he arrived. ‘Please come in.’ ‘You can leave your shoes on.’ ‘Can I take your coat?’

It was only a week since they met with Bolsa so he could tell Hector and Fring to cut the pissing contest, until Hector suddenly and violently had a stroke. Nacho was left with Arturo as the new thorn in his side, until he received a call from Fring inviting him to his house to discuss the business. Nacho had been waiting for the axe to drop for months.

But at that moment, he felt weirdly, eerily, calm.

He looked at Fring, hoping he remained expressionless.

“No.”

Fring nodded with a smile, and returned to the stove, lifting the lid of the pan to smell the paila marina that has been simmering since Nacho arrived. The rich smell of seafood and spices was making him a little dizzy.

“Good,” said Fring. “I would be very embarrassed to discover I had cooked something that made you sick.”

Nacho couldn’t even tell if that was supposed to be a threat. He said it so sincerely. While Fring finished whatever he was doing, Nacho was reclined against the counter, arms folded, head down so as to not look confrontational, but also to get a read on the place.

The house couldn’t have been older than the ‘60s, but the gut renovation was new, and opened the floor plan up to get rid of any blind spots. If Tyrus or Victor were watching them, they had to be getting a leg cramp from where they were hiding since there was nowhere they could do it while standing. It made him think of his father’s house. The small two bedroom was built in the 1930s, renovated in the 1970s, and barely touched since then. His father refused to take his money, no matter how he earned it, and it made Nacho ache with wonder at what it must be like to afford such a life like Fring’s.

The radio was tuned to KUNM, and the broadcasting major on the mike was doing a tribute night to Sara Montiel. If Tyrus and Victor were listening through a bug, the whistles of “Maniquí” would be making their earpieces whine.

Nacho had been living his life on a knife’s edge for long enough, he knew when he was being watched, so it was very strange to be in the kitchen of his boss’s fiercest rival, and realize it was just the two of them. Alone. And about to have dinner. He knew it, but he didn’t understand it.

“How is Hector?” Fring asked. “I hope his recovery is going smoothly.”

No point in lying with this guy, or being too pointed with the truth either. ‘Equivocate’. That was one word that stuck with him since high school. They read Macbeth in tenth grade, and trying to understand that kind of English was like chewing peanut butter, glue, and chiclas all at once. When he was called on to talk about the book, he somehow managed to talk around it so he wouldn’t get in trouble for not finishing it, and his teacher said with pride, “Ignacio Varga knows how to equivocate.”

He didn’t remember much about the play now, except for the witches, the knife, and looking for a dictionary that had the word ‘equivocate’.

For Fring’s inquiry of Hector, he shrugged.

“I couldn’t really say.”

Hector hadn’t recovered or declined, but Nacho wasn’t a medical expert. He honestly couldn’t say.

Fring turned off the burners and ladled the soup into a simple steel tureen. When he was satisfied with the stew, Fring grabbed an oven mitt and removed a tray of golden brown bolillo rolls from the oven. He popped the hot rolls one-by-one into a breadbasket, the crust cracking against each other as they landed, and then left the tray on the stove, and the mitt on the counter. It was another small trace of uncharacteristically sloppy behavior, like the spots of fish oil and splattered broth along the stove’s edge. Nacho couldn’t imagine Fring being this careless about his kitchen, even if he was home alone and cooking for one.

He brought the stew to the table, and Ignacio involuntarily leaned up from the counter. His reflex was to help carry the bread, but he still didn’t know if there was poison in the soup, razors in the lemon wedges, or dynamite in the bread. And he was starting to wonder if it was hunger or something else that had him looking for trouble in every corner.

Fring put the stew down and smiled at Nacho.

“Please, sit.” He returned to the counter for the basket and a bottle of white wine. When he grabbed the bottle of Napa Valley sauvignon, Fring looked like he might have miscalculated.

“Do you drink wine? Or would you prefer something else?”  
“I’m fine. Where do you want me?” Nacho asked.

Nacho never liked to drink on the job. It was easier to let everyone else get sloppy, while he dumped the contents of his shot glass in a plant or an ignored water glass. Fring gestured to a seat and Nacho sat down, scooting his chair in until he’s comfortable. The table was in front of a window, but the blinds were drawn.

There was stew, the rolls, lemon wedges, wine, and water. Fring took Nacho’s bowl and ladled the stew in. The mustard brown broth was filled with onion, peppers, chunks of white fish, pale pink clams in black shells, bright orange shrimp, and calamari the color of freshly dried blood.

“I know it doesn’t seem like much, but I think you’ll find it’s quite filling.” Fring placed the bowl on Nacho’s plate, served himself, and returned the ladle to the tureen before he sat down.

There was no good way to get out of this. Nacho’s phone was in his jacket pocket, and much as he could fake an emergency about his father, the last thing Nacho wanted to do was get him any more involved in this. Fring seemed to be aware of the tension. He unfolded his napkin and spoke warmly.

“Ignacio, please. You have nothing to worry about. Don Juan is not involved in this meeting. This invitation is my own. I simply wanted to meet with the man who I will be working with while Hector is indisposed.”

Nacho’s eyes narrowed at the overly complicated assurance, as he put some pieces together. Indisposed? He had a fucking stroke. Fring wasn’t asking about Hector because he genuinely wanted to know. He wanted to know what he knew. There was no way Fring hadn’t been to see Hector.

“Why don’t you tell me what you know?” Nacho asked.

Fring’s smile melted into cool regard. He was quiet as he placed his napkin in his lap. The vapor rising off the broth and boiled clams moved faster than he did.

“I know your father is innocent in all this. You do not have to worry. Consider him under our protection.”

A cold shock dropped through Ignacio, boiled in his stomach, and evaporated. Fring’s statement was a power move, both terrifying and reassuring. He had shown Nacho the cards in his possession without asking him to show his. But there was something else picking at his nerves, and Fring was aware of it. He looked directly at Nacho when he spoke.

“But Hector Salamanca is not yours to kill.”

Nacho’s eyebrows arched involuntarily. Fring had called his bluff and Nacho knew better than to counter. He didn’t break eye contact with Fring. If they were going to have this conversation, there was no point in trying to lie to this man in his own home. 

“Does he know?” Nacho asked, trying to mirror his host’s calm demeanor. He knew he was the quietest of anyone involved with the Salamancas, but he felt like a shaking ball of nerves with Fring looking at him. 

“He is awake, and aware, but unable to do much.” Fring smiled warmly. “Eat. Please.”

Fring started eating. Nacho didn’t know what to expect from his food, and there was still way too much to be discussed before he ate unfamiliar food in an unfamiliar setting with his boss’s sworn enemy.

“What about Arturo?” Nacho asked, just trying to cover the basics.  
“Is he a friend?”

Ignacio didn’t mean to snort. He could blame it on the pepper, but Fring smiled and lifted a piece of cod into his spoon. The thick, pale fish was ringed in warm brown broth, that dripped off the sides of his spoon.

“An unfortunate car accident.”

That’s fine. Never liked the puto anyway. One less Salamanca to worry about.

Nacho rested his elbows on the table, laced his fingers together to keep them still, but then found it was more comfortable to fold his arms and lean back in his chair. He tried to assure himself it was because the soup was too hot to keep his hands over. He was already sweating from nerves and the heat of the kitchen and why he almost felt happy when the door opened to 1213 Jefferson and he was greeted by a savory gust of frying onions, garlic, paprika, shellfish, and jalapenos that almost knocked him off his feet.

Or maybe it was Fring’s smile. His hand on his shoulder as he helped him out of his leather jacket. The slightest glance down and back up at his black polo shirt with the silver Aztec highlights. Nacho kept trying to tell himself this was a trap. Fring already admitted as much since he knew he was involved with Hector’s stroke. How come he only felt certain the paila marina was all he had prepared, instead of something more terrifying? 

“So what’s all this for?” Nacho asked.

Fring looked up. If he had any other intentions, he was imperceptible, but there was the slightest waver in his voice.

“I wished to express my gratitude.” Fring said. There was a very long pause as he chooses his words carefully. “Your actions may have set things…ahead of schedule.”

Fring had done a very good job of being in control. He had played the part of a genteel host, in a salmon pink sweater, in a catalog clean home in Sandia Ridge. Like he was one of the any other assimilated pochos in ABQ. Shit, if the blinds were up and anyone looked in the window to see where they were eating, he could pass for a dentist.

But his admission of what Ignacio’s actions meant to him made Fring smile. There was pleasure in his eyes at admitting he knew what he did. A violence. 

And he liked it.

 _Oh._ Nacho realized. _We’re gonna fuck._

Nacho smirked. It was as much of an admission as Fring’s statement. Except he made one more bold gesture.

Fring reached across the table to Nacho’s bowl and stabbed a calamari, sending bits of broth splattering out of the bowl from the fork’s violent gesture, before he casually removed the rust red tentacle, dripping with broth, from Nacho’s soup.

If they were younger and more openly suggestive, there were all kinds of ways Fring could pull the savory appendage off his fork and into his mouth. Instead of something more vulgar, he didn’t let fork or fish touch his lips, until they were inside his mouth. He pulled his fork out of his mouth, and chewed with his lips firmly closed, like he was counting his bites before he swallowed. He was completely in control and destroyed all evidence he had been so bold as to eat off his neighbor’s plate.

Nacho invited himself to return the favor. He dipped his spoon into Fring’s bowl to sample the broth and steal a shrimp. He brought it to his side of the table before he could drip on the tablecloth.

He knew he should savor his own food, but the knots in his neck that came undone at knowing he didn’t have to worry anymore, and that this might even go well, made him feel more reckless than he had been allowed to be in months.

He put the shrimp in his mouth, and at first bite, the sweet and savory flavors overwhelmed him. The temperature and bite of the jalapenos should have been what startled him first, but it was the rich, salty flavor of the seafood, like there was still a touch of ocean water in the body of the shrimp, that poured over his tongue and teeth and took hold of all his senses. 

Nacho held the soup in his mouth, letting the chunky, broken prawn sit in his mouth, and the broth rest below his tongue so the taste of salt sank into his flesh. He didn’t want to swallow just yet.

“Is it too much?” Gustavo asked.

Nacho shook his head. He swallowed so he could speak, and put his spoon down. He finally felt the bite of the jalapeños as he chewed what was left, and blinked the tears away.

“It’s really good.”

Fring smiled, satisfied with his cooking, and his guest’s pleasure.

“Do I have any allergies?” Nacho asked, as he took a roll. He wanted to see what else he knew.

Gustavo looked at him, and smiled.

“Not to my knowledge.”

They didn’t fuck that night. Gustavo was too curious to know how Nacho switched the pills, and he was so enthralled with how clever he was about it, he almost forgot the other reason he invited Nacho over: to discuss a proposition.

Nacho went home alone, but with a Tupperware cup of extra stew.

“I always make extra,” Gustavo explained, like he even needed to, as Nacho pulled his jacket back on. He probably didn’t need to wear it, he was so warm from the kitchen and the food and the good mood he was in, but it had been awhile since he got to look cool for someone.

He stood by the front door, hands folded in front of him out of habit, not sure what he was waiting for. Gustavo was just standing there, looking at him with a closed mouth smile.

“Thank you for dinner.” Nacho said. “You’ll be in touch?”  
“Yes.”

 _Aw, that’s cute. He’s flustered._ Nacho nodded. It blew his mind he couldn’t stop smiling either. He opened the front door.

“Have a good night.” Nacho said.  
“Good night.” Gustavo smiled.

Nacho walked out to his van with a swing in his step, and leftover paila marina in his hand.

This could get interesting.

**Author's Note:**

> This might turn into something longer. I've got the overall points of it sketched out, but leave a comment if you want to see more.


End file.
